Hi Bryce, Martin, Tavmjong, Krzysztof, Ted, Josh, & Jon...
Apologies for the cold group email, but I'm hoping that this will be of interest, and maybe mutually beneficial.
I'm Justin Maxwell, and I'm the founder of London startup
tibit. We're also just a tiny wee early-stage company, taking on one of the great unsolved Internet problems of the past couple of decades - casual micropayments (and micro-donations!). This gives us a big 'chicken and egg' problem - to succeed we need sites and software that are 'tibbable', to bring in the users - and we need the users to bring in the recipients. We're different to Flattr etc, in that we address the cognitive barrier to making small 'in-the-moment' payments or donations online. We set out to achieve making a micro-donation as easy as dropping a couple of coins into a buskers hat, once a user has signed up.
Specifically, we're hoping to tib button on your donations page, but the longer term plan is to give appreciative users of Inkscape (and similarly other appreciated software and content) a way to tangibly show that appreciation repeatedly, perhaps with a means to tib directly from the application help menu. Not so much as a request for donations as much as enabling users to easily show their support.
We use bitcoin at the back-end, but local currency for the donating user, paid with their existing Visa/MasterCard. You don't seem to currently have a bitcoin donation option, and there might be some minor issues with passing payment along to the Software Freedom Conservancy, but if we add to the reasons why Inkscape might get and publish a donations bitcoin address, so much the better.
Here's how it works:
Users buy a bundle of ten-or-more tokens (we call them tibs) of a value they set (say €0.25) and can then give/pay them out wherever they see a tib button (it also works as a simple link). Because the tibs have already been paid for, and the value pre-set, the user doesn't have to think twice, consider price fairness, or decide how much, for each tiny transaction. This makes deciding to show some support or reward something worthwhile a near-instinctive decision for a user.
Once five tibs are collected for a particular bitcoin address, the combined value is paid out to your bitcoin address. We take 2p (~3¢) regardless of the value of the users tib. Because it's bitcoin, there isn't any signup required by the recipient, just set the bitcoin address as a parameter.
Have a look at this
codepen - it's set up to use a testnet bitcoin address, so operates in demo mode, but it'll give you an idea of how slick and easy the tibbing process is, and a feel for why this can work where so many other attempts to solve 'The Micropayments Problem' have not. (note that there is a Chrome bug relating to Codepen sand-boxed child windows that makes it work better in other browsers) or you can spend the two free tibs we give every new user via our
home or
about us pages, or the other projects linked above.
I’m not going to pretend anyone has made a lot of $£€ from one of our buttons yet! But as tib buttons pop-up in more and more places people will start to give, little and often, to the services, products, and content that they use and appreciate.
We’d love to work with you on this. If you’d like to, you can just use the button from the Codepen after getting a bitcoin address, but if we can can help in anyway to integrate it further, please drop me an email.
Meanwhile, as someone who uses every few days, I wouldn't be reaching out to you if *I* wouldn't be sending tibs your way...
Best regards,
--Justin